A talk given by Eugene Halliday, transcribed and with
arbitrary headings by John Bailey.

The drawings aren’t originals, and all editor’s
notes are in square brackets.

Often, the remarks from the audience are indistinct,

especially in the exercise from time stamp[1:04:58] onwards

.

I’m
going to draw now. Just ignore me for a little will you please? Does
anyone know these symbols? If you don’t, leave the room
immediately.

Well,
they’re called the Fixed Signs in the Zodiac. And normally they
are used by astrologers to determine characters and events, and so
on. But that is not our use of them. We are not interested in the
future, we’re interested in the present, and we’re going
to show their present significance. The reason why: because we live
in the present and we have never lived at any other time.

Throughout
the whole of our life it has been Now. And running through now has
been time sequence, linear events, and we tend to think that time is
passing on, and that we have to catch up with the future. But
actually we have never lived other than now. And the real now is
total reality which is the Universe with all its powers, all its
causal situations … existing now. The Sun exists now, although
it’s night- time. The stars exist now, they are all modalities
of an Infinite Power which is now and never was other than now. Time
is a linear presentation within that mysterious Infinite Now. As
Plato put it, time is the moving image of eternity. Eternity
is not a lot of time, eternity is Now, eternity is Power, Now,
modalising Itself.

Now,
within the symbology we have here, we have Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and
Aquarius. They correspond with the four gospels of the New Testament,
and they correspond with four beasts before the throne of God in the
Old Testament. They correspond also with four headings in the
Egyptian burial ritual … three animals and one man. And they
actually correspond with parts of a human being and with four
processes. [2:57]

Now, the
first process, the Taurus one, which is the … here [indicating
a diagram he’s drawn on the paper] … that one means
simply, loop. Take Infinity and loop it. From Infinity, turning
inwards to make a loop … and then go back. From Infinity —
to Infinity — via the loop. If you don’t loop Infinite
Power, you don’t finite it. Now, the finiting, the limitation
of that power is exactly the same meaning as creation. Creation is
from a base kra which is to arc or loop, to make an ark like
Noah’s ark, and to trap inside that sphere — that
encapsulation zone, that loop — to trap energy of Infinity. The
energy of Infinity is trapped within the encapsulation zone
symbolised by that sign that in the Zodiac we call Taurus.

Taurus
means to turn, the same base as the word turn, the same T.R.
in turn and rotate, and so on. When the energy of Infinity is
captured, what is captured is a zone of chaos. Think about this very
carefully … before creation there is Infinite Power, the
Infinite Power has no control, because the word control means with
rolling, with rotation, con-trol, with-rotation, with looping,
with circular capturing, with encapsulation. So before the
encapsulation there is an infinity of power, and this power has no
control. The purpose of encapsulating is simply to make the first
step towards control. We will now think about why it should bother to
have control. The power is Infinite. [5:42]

Now, we
have on other occasions pointed out that all power is sentient, and
that to think that it is not sentient is dualistic. Very shortly,
because I see some faces I haven’t seen before, I will restate
that. A dualism of two absolutely different somethings, absolutely
different qualities, absolutely different substances, would be
impossible of relation. Because if there were two ultimate realities,
totally different, they could have no relation with them whatever.
But we observe a simple fact throughout the whole of the animal
world, of the human world, and if we’re a little more
discriminating, in the plant world and in the mineral world, we find
a peculiar thing: attraction and repulsion, power moving in two
directions, power moving towards centres and power moving away from
centres. [6:28]

Non-duality

Now, we
know, by simple experiments with our own being that we have a
capacity to do things … like I might lift my leg up and point
to my friend Donald over there. Can you see I’m pointing to
Donald? What an accurate pointer my foot is. In order to lift up my
leg I expended a certain amount of energy. Energy means that that
power is in work. En-erg-y means in-work-affirming [en/in,
erg/work, y/affirmation]. And I know that I lifted it, I felt
that a dualism is impossible, so I can’t have Sentience
absolutely different from Power, I can’t have Power absolutely
different from Sentience. Power/Sentience must be used together.
Sentient Power, S.P., Power Sentience, P.S., these two are aspects of
that which is not two.

Now, we
don’t say they are one, because if we say one we are
trying to reduce either sentience or power to the other, or to a
third which has these two qualities … namely sentience and
power. We don’t resolve it, so we use the term non-dual
instead of the term unity. Instead of saying there is only one
in the Universe, we say there are not two, that is to say that the
a-dvaita, the non-duality of sentience and power. It does not reduce
the Sentience to Power, it does not reduce the Power to Sentence, it
says the Power and Sentience are not two … but neither can you
say that they are one.

In
philosophy, particularly Indian philosophy, it is considered to be
the highest and most difficult concept of all, this concept of
non-duality, to say there is sentence, there is power and you
cannot reduce power to sentience and you cannot reduce sentience to
power and you cannot reduce both of them to something else behind
them, because that would leave you with the problem … how?
If you say the thing behind them is X, X appears as S and P, then S
and P would have to be, at least, potentially, in the X. Sentience
and power are immediate apprehensions that we have of our own being.
Whenever we move a limb, whenever we focus a sense, whenever we
expend energy and know that we do so, we feel that we use power. But
the power and the feeling of the using the power cannot be reduced to
each other. So we have this peculiar thing, an apparent duality,
Sentience and Power, which is not a duality in truth. We simply
accept it. [9:34]

When you
bend a finger, will you bend a finger? Bend a finger. Can you feel
that you bend it? Can you feel that it is power … that you can
make it very stiff or you can be very sloppy with it? You can feel
that there is power and you can’t reduce the power to the
feeling or the feeling to the power, but you do actually do both,
simultaneously. [9:59]

Now, when
we make a loop — that is the sign of Taurus — it is the
sign of embodiment, so that the sign of Taurus is the fixed sign for
corporeal existence. You exist as a physical body because
Power/Sentience or Sentient Power have looped themselves,
encapsulated themselves, turned themselves into what we call a
physical being. Taurus is the mark of physicality of the individual.
And the loop, when it turns in upon itself, tends to close, tends to
go round and round and keep going.

Now,
by repetition, consciousness tends to be dominated. Anything you do
habitually tends to maintain itself and appears to be a reality
because of its habituation. By the continuous rotation of the
Sentient Power it appears that there is a being there, and there is a
real danger of forgetting that actually this rotation is a function
of an Infinite Power, coming in and encapsulating itself, and then
going out. [11:26]

Now,
supposing we make another one of these nearby, this is the same thing
exactly, could go out … but they touch here. That is the place
of contingent stimulation. As soon as they touch, they interfere with
each other. The energy input from A to B, B to A is an interference.
It’s actually an obscuration of the infinite intention to make
a being. Now, it’s a very simple thing to say contingency is
the cause of all the world’s misapprehensions. If it weren’t
for contingency — that is, touching — you would not be
deceived, because if it weren’t for contingency, every being
would come in and establish itself as it is, in and from itself with
its own volitional power, its own sentience. There would be nothing
other than that being, self-stimulating, self-encapsulating,
self-knowing. There could be no error, there could be no possibility
of a misapprehension, there could only be the fact of Sentient Power
self-encapsulating. Its mode of action would be what it is exactly,
without interference, and without impedance. But as soon as you come
to the point where there are more than one encapsulation zone —
more than one Taurus where contingency arises — then one being
— that is one rotatory energy system — can touch another
and induce in that other some energy input which disturbs the true
self-positing of the being. [12:23]

666

Now if we
use the letter F, the sixth letter, as a number six, and remember
what Felus Judaus says about six, it’s the most perfect number
for creating existences. Because when you come from Infinity and wind
inwards in this way and encapsulate, you have done a diagram which we
call the number six, and it is the diagram of a self-encapsulating
power, and it means solo, individual existence. So that each
individual of us is, by the fact of coming in and self-encapsulation
of power, is really symbolised by six. And that to why in that last
book of the Bible it says the number of man is six and six and six.
Three sixes, because he thinks, he feels and he wills. There’s
a wind into thought, there’s wind into feeling, there’s a
wind into the appetival, conative drive. So six, six, six is the
number of man. [17:37]

Now the
same number is also the number of the state established by man, the
state which declares itself to be a being, and to an oligarchy tends
to try to rule individuals. But each individual is a triple six like
the state is.

The
national state has to think … there’s a bureaucracy.

It
has to feel, by various methods of investigating public opinion.

And
it has to impose force via the army and police on the state.

So the
state also is six, six, six. And when we wind in in this way, at the
moment of contingent stimulation the energy input of A to B, or B to
A, tends at the point of stimulation to obscure the behaviour of the
being which is being posited from the Infinite.

Now all religions are talking about this and about nothing else. They
are telling you that if you operate from Infinity and not from
contingency, then you are, in fact, a divine being. You are able to
divine, to determine, to develop continuously your own being if you
operate from the Infinite. But if you fall into contingent
stimulation and are therefore extroverted and focused on another
being outside your own zone of encapsulation, the stimulus given to
you by the other being determines your behaviour. The moment you
identify with an external stimulus you go under the law governing
that stimulus. Now, religion is talking about nothing else except how
to bind yourself back, re-ligere, bind [-ligere]
yourself back [re-] to the original Infinite self-positing.

Every
human being is a very peculiar being because there is free energy
above, called Heaven, there is bound inertic energy called Earth. A
mass inertia of rotating energy which we call substance or matter,
and a free initiating intelligent energy which is called Spirit.
Spirit posits itself as matter. Matter is a modality of Spirit. The
only difference between your physical body and your Will as initiator
of your action is that your physical body’s energies have all
got themselves trapped into little rotatory systems. So that you have
a rotating repetitive pattern of thought, and a rotating repetitive
pattern of emotional response, and a rotating repetitive pattern of
conative reaction to external stimuli. [17:53]

Idols

Now, if
you fall into external identification with the source of any
stimulus, then that source of stimulus from outside you is called an
idol. As far as you’re concerned, it has no function for you
other than to stimulate you to remind you to go back on your own
centre. If you fall into evaluating it as something in itself valid,
other than by your observation, and you then proceed to put a value
upon it, it is called an idol. It’s called an idol, I.D.O.L.
because it’s idle I.D.L.E. … it doesn’t work for
you, you work for it. Anything whatever for which you work, whether
it’s mineral, vegetable, animal, human, angelic, whatever it
is, if you work for it as outside you, as a form which you posit
outside your own, then it is for you an idol, and you are an idolater
if you do so. And if you do so, the contingent stimulus that is
imposed upon you by that being is a determinant of your life and an
obscuration of your essential spiritual creativity.

Now,
if you are bound up in this way, and through contingent stimuli your
rotatory repetitive behavioural system makes you forget your divine
or infinite spiritual origin, then you are represented simply by a
circle. A serpent with his tail in his mouth is the earliest symbol
we have of this. A simple rotatory energy, which has forgotten that
it comes from infinity, is posited by Infinity and is actually free
to initiate new things. But through its identification it has
forgotten that it is free. The free is outside — that’s
the Spirit — and the dome is inside … the encapsulation.

Now,
supposing we did not have an encapsulation zone, and there were no
encapsulation zones at all in the Infinite, the Infinite has a
peculiar characteristic. Through its initiative — a Uranian
thing — through its initiative it is absolutely unstable. It
moves unpredictably in fits and starts. It is utterly dangerous, it
is continuously re-judging, cutting itself into pieces, and maintains
nothing. Imagine therefore, before creation, before the arcing
process, before encapsulation, an Infinity of Sentient Power, and the
power has no control and just darts hither and thither in Infinity
with no prediction power whatever and no stability. It is Sentient
Power in a state of absolute chaos. And that Power, because of its
instability, decides from itself to make zones of encapsulation. And
a zone of encapsulation becomes for it a stable centre of reference.

It is a
peculiar fact that the anxiety that you see throughout the whole of
the animal world — human, and if you know any demons or angels
— they are all in a state of profound instability, and they
have anxiety. The anxiety in all beings, the anxiety you feel in
yourself — and surely daily you experience some anxiety about
something — the anxiety is caused by your perception of the
instability of the Sentient Power that constitutes your being …
anxiety before creation. Anxiety is the state of chaotic Sentient
Power before creation. This anxiety precipitates within itself zones
of encapsulation on which to lean, and every encapsulation zone that
it makes to lean upon in itself, and to enter into, it makes it as a
garden, a guarded place like the Garden of Eden. It goes in there to
stabilise itself, to make itself so that it is not continuously
unpredictably in a state of anxiety. It posits a zone of
encapsulation and traps a zone of anxiety within the encapsulation
zone. Then all it has to do is go inside this zone and order it.

Positing Stability in the Unstable
Mind

Order
means … it’s the same root as the Torah. The T.R. change
according to your Grimm’s Law, change T to D and you have this
door, this gift from the Infinite to posit stability within the
unstable chaos of Infinity. Your anxiety is perfectly obvious if you
care to look inside your mind at any time — especially
uninterruptedly, say in the middle of the night — look in your
mind and see if it’s stable. Within a few minutes you will find
that it isn’t stable, it’s continuously presenting you
with things, with ideas, with feelings, with impulses … and
none of it’s stable.

What you
experience in a dream is a kind of semi-stability where forms appear
for a few seconds and then they vanish away again. And you don’t
like dreaming, because dreams easily turn into nightmares don’t
they? And if you had a nightmare, a bad one, you know that you’d
rather wake up than stay in it. The nightmare is a lovely example of
what it is like before creation, where every form — remember
all Power is Sentient — every form feels itself. Have you ever
seen in a nightmare a horrible thing, a strange form, a weird face?
Have you had in your imagination sudden apprehensions that you can’t
quite place? And have you thought to yourself that is Sentient Power
forming itself and looking like a horrible monster or a demon or a
dragon or some kind of undesirable creature? It is Sentient Power
playing about within the field of your consciousness. [25:19]

Sin

Now, when
you make this zone and forget its Infinite origin, and close yourself
in it as a result of contingent stimulation, you then feel isolated …
you are cut off from Infinity. Now, this cut-offness from Infinity
represented here by dome, the serpent with tail in mouth, is the very
meaning and the only serious meaning to be attributed to the word
sin.

To cut
yourself off from your creative Infinite Sentient Power is the only
sin.

Sin means
that you have cut yourself off from your Infinite creativity, and now
think that you are condemned to be the kind of being you are instead
of remembering that in fact you can become any kind of being whatever
by remembering your Infinite source, which is essentially creative.
In the very moment of self-encapsulation and the forgetting of your
Infinity, you find yourself to be a domed being or a damned being,
the word’s the same origin. This is a being that is trapped in
finitude, trapped in limitation, and it has chaos inside it. Because
when that power turned in and tied itself up — the serpent got
its tail in its mouth — all the power that was trapped inside
that sphere was actually chaotic power from Infinity. So that when
you trap yourself to try to make this dome of stability, you find
that you have a chaotic Power Sentience inside you which you must
then work on. Either you work on that internal chaos, or you spend
the whole of your life in a state of unease … a state of
continuous, internal self-warfare.

Now the
Taurus sign tells you you are coming in, encapsulating, and that you
stand in danger at the moment of encapsulation, of the possibility of
forgetting your Infinite source of creativity. When a stimulus comes
to you from another being, that much increases the possibility of
your forgetting your Infinite source, because the stimulus given to
you by another being imposes on your pattern something that is alien.
All beings — without exception — that are individuated,
are unique, and therefore their stimulus to you is unique. It does
not match, nor can it match absolutely, your own being. [28:19]

So you are
in a position where you are domed and you have an internal chaos. And
the problem is, How are you going to get rid of the chaos?

Now there
are two ways of doing it. One is immediate suicide. That is to say,
cut and open up, and let yourself back into the Infinite chaos that
you came from. The other one is stay inside and work. Some of the
great hedonists were a little thorough in their logic and they said
life is not worth living unless it is pleasant, and any pain
immediately makes life not worth living, so don’t wait to get
better because the process of healing is painful. So a man cuts
his thumb and immediately committed suicide because life at that
moment was not worth existing. That’s what we call
thorough-going Greek philosophical actualism. It’s very good
that the Greeks could do that because they taught us a lesson about
the thorough-going application of any philosophical concept. When you
get an idea, push it to the limit and see what happens. If something
horrible happens, you’ll at least have benefited other people
who observe the horriblenesses happen to you. You can then become a
self-elected scapegoat dying happily knowing that you have helped
forward the evolution of human intelligence. [29:57]

Now some
people have actually done that … actually allowed themselves
to get into a position where their death has resulted in furthering
of the intelligence of the human race. The most obvious one of the
last few thousand years of course is Jesus, who arranged his own
crucifixion so that people would get a tremendous shock and realise
that they and external authorities represented in his day by the
establishment … they and external authorities are
fundamentally enemies. The external authority is the occasion of an
outer stimulus that obscures your
essential creativity.

Now just
as in the sign of Taurus we have this loop, so when we come to the
sign of Leo we see that the loop is open. We have two opposite signs,
the sign of in-binding, the creation of a dome … and then a
sign of opening, the sign of Leo, the sign of the Lion that dares to
open itself after it’s been closed

Now
it’s perfectly obvious that if this encapsulation zone, having
observed that it’s trapped chaos which needs to be ordered,
suddenly decides to itself, well I won’t do that, it’s
too much like hard work, I will open myself. So it opens, and
immediately the power that is inside it radiates forth and goes back
into the Infinite chaos from which it came. You’re back, not at
square one because in the Infinite there aren’t any squares …
there are no freemasons in the pre-creational Infinite. So therefore
in Leo symbolizes that you can actually be released back into
Infinite chaos. Now that’s a sort of deterrent to suicidal
people, because when you destroy your centre of reference, your
physical body and your brain and all the references that go with it,
all you do is precipitate yourself back into the Infinite chaos from
which you derived, and therefore there is necessitated another
thought.

Instead of
merely being bound up in a repetitive process of rotation like the
Taurus, instead of reacting to it by freeing yourself like a Leo and
going back into the Infinite Power, you decide, Scorpio-wise …
this sign with the tail with an arrow on the end, means devotion, it
means dedication, it means attachment to the job of ordering your
inner chaos by your own effort. [32:52]

A bound state in Taurus, a free state which is suicidal in Leo, and a
re-decision to enter the bound and devote yourself to it, thoroughly
to examine its implications, and so bring order to it. The order, you
remember the ord the O.R.D. the R.O.D. the D.O.R. The door is
a rod of measurement. You go inside your chaos and you begin to
operate within chaos, deliberately to bring order … with a
measuring rod. The rod: it’s a pole … it’s a
perch. It will be a perch when you can quietly perch on it after
you’ve used it effectively as a rod and a pole. With the pole
of course, you erect your tent … the pole is the axis of your
being. You have such a pole in your spinal column. [33:52]

Power
Form and Function

Now, when
you devote yourself, you then see you can move round to the sign of
Aquarius. And Aquarius means memory. So, within your chaos, if you
look very carefully, you will find a very simple thing: this chaos if
highly repetitive. What you thought was an Infinite chaos,
irresolvable, is really very resolvable if you look hard and often.
Mere repetition of sharp observation with nothing else produces
order, because you recognise again and again and again the
presentation of the same thing. [34:41]

Thought
… that’s form, that is circumscription, a binding line.

Feeling
… that is liking and disliking.

And
willing … initiating a change within it.

There
isn’t anything else to learn. So this fantastical Infinite
chaos is not so difficult as it would first appear, because it all
comes under the heading of form or idea. Idea is the Greek for form,
the shape of things … the affective charge upon things, that
is your liking and disliking, and the tendency to insert energy into
them to change them. So if you then look inside your mind with very
sharp focus looking for form, affective charge, and your tendency to
do something about it, you will reduce the chaos very quickly to
those three categories.

Now power,
form and function are the three things to remember.

There
is Power Infinite.

That
Power, by in-winding has made form.

And
then it juggles with the form that it makes, and that juggling about
is function.

Power,
form, function … there isn’t anything else to learn. And
if you look inside your mind or your body you will find nothing
except forms of power which function when the Power moves into them.
The Power first posits the form, then enters the form and moves it
about, and the moving about is the function.

So you
have an arm. Your elbow bends this way, it doesn’t bend the
other way very well. If you test yourself with an arm there is a
certain amount of weight which you can feel there which you might
call the effect of gravity on earth, but you have an ability to lift
up. And this ability to lift against gravity convinces you that in
act there is power to lift your arm up, and there is power to bend
it, and there is power to rotate it, and you can do things with it.

Now, every
time you expend energy — and remember your body is energy
self-condensed — when you expend energy, you formulate it and
moving it about, you functionalist it. So that when you do a thing
like waving a hand about, you are actually do it through three
things, simultaneously. You are using power, forming, and
functionalizing … simultaneously.

Now, there
isn’t anything else to learn. And all the great religions have
taught exactly this same thing: power, form, function. In
Christianity it is called Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the Hebrew
alphabet it’s called, Aleph, Beth, Gimmel … that is to
say an Infinite Power, which encapsulates itself, and then applies
itself.

Now you
are doing it all the time in your thinking, feeling, willing.

And to
coordinate these three, to stop them getting out of phase, so that
what you are actually focused upon is the power that you put into the
form, and that you are positing this form by your power. And when the
power goes into the form — that is the idea — it pushes
the condensed power, which is your body, about, and you are imposing
on you in this pushing, a formal function. No one else does it, and
you relate to others, and the others striking against you
contingently tend to knock you off what you are trying to posit.

Now if you
remember your Infinite source, you are actually, infinitely creative.
It’s a terrible thing to say that, you know. You are actually
Infinitely creative when you rescue yourself from the contingent
stimulation to which you are continuously exposed. [39:19]

Contingent Relation Exercise

Try to
think of a little thing, doesn’t matter what it is, take a
thing you would call problematic, and then let the person next to you
start hitting you while you are thinking. Would you like to do that
little experiment? All start nudging each other whilst the ones that
are being nudged are trying to think of an abstract thing like, say,
Spinoza’s concept of the inevitability of God’s mode of
operation. Try to think it but nudge each other … really have
a go, don’t be shy.

Hell Fire

You know,
the horrible thing about … [sound of an excited audience] Now
try to think while you are being nudged, will you please. Nudge and
think. See if you can nudge the other person, and remember what you
are doing for yourself. Right? [the continuing sound of an excited
audience — 40:07]

Do you
notice a peculiar thing about this? What’s the first thing you
notice about it? It’s very hard to remember what you are
supposed to be thinking about if you are nudging somebody else, yes?
… also, the temperature in the room is going up. [audience
laughter]

Now I want
you to imagine that before creation, we, the very same beings which
we now are, were in the infinite, yes?, in the infinite, as
inter-penetrating spheres — not gross material — spheres
of power, and we had nothing better to do than nudge each other
perpetually. And the result was the generation of colossal heat. And
that heat in religion is called hell fire. That’s the meaning
of hell.

Hell means
that some other silly twit is trying to interrupt you in the midst of
your very marvelous self-discovery. And you are just in the middle of
getting a brilliant idea to win the Nobel Prize with a new thesis,
when some idiot woman comes along and tickles your ears and you
forget what you are doing. Or a friend comes along who’s a
well-known boozer, and tells you that you are not quite a male if you
don’t join him in his drunkenness. And out of sheer lack of his
opinion of your opinion of his opinion, you join him.

Now this
is the state before creation. Now how do you like it? When you were
doing a bit of mild nudging, as an English lot you don’t nudge
really very, very dedicatedly, do you? You tend to be inhibited. If
we had all Jews here, or all Arabs, or all anything except English
people, we could get up a very good temperature in a very short time.
[42:22]

Now this
is our state. I want you to understand that. We are eternal power
beings, we are monads. We are spiritual encapsulated beings long
before the Earth is formed as a gross body in the Solar System. We
are zones of Sentient Power. We are unique and we are eternal, and we
are always playing hell with each other. And because of this fact
there’s tremendous conflagration throughout Infinity.

Logos Light

And then,
through this tremendous generation of heat, a light is struck. The
light is generated by this marvelous heat. And the light suddenly
shines through the whole of Infinite space. That light is called the
light that never was on land or sea, it is the light of the
Logos. It is the light of the Infinite Logic of reality, and it is
the product of tremendous infinite mutual jostling. And as the light
spreads through those spiritual monads, suddenly they see each other.
Before, they were jostling in the dark. Now, they are suddenly in the
light and they see what is happening. There’s a jostler next
to me. When the eyes were closed you didn’t really know
whether it was somebody else or whether it was a tension on your
surface or a disturbance in your own being produced by you. By the
appearance of light — which symbolises consciousness — by
the appearance of that you become aware that there are actually
beings near you, contingently stimulating you and knocking you off
your infinite, unique contribution to reality. You become
illuminated.

Now
because of the impossibility in the infinite chaos of there being an
immediate total agreement of the infinite monads that are there, it
follows that the light must have started somewhere before somewhere
else, and that light is the one that we call God. The point where the
light struck first and spread — that is the meaning of let
there be light — consciousness appeared suddenly in the
middle of all those jostlings because of the inequality of the heat
from the mutual jostling. And that consciousness seized control.

Now this
is tremendously important … that consciousness seized control
of the whole mass that had not yet attained to consciousness. And
that consciousness, remember — Sentience and Power,
consciousness is Sentient Power playing with itself — that
consciousness seized the whole situation and became for it, a god. It
actually seized it and determined it. It wrapped it up, encapsulated
it, and made the Universe. [45:53]

Now in
exactly the same way, the same law — there is only one law —
is applied at every level, going downwards in what we call the
involutionary mode from the infinite towards the finite physical body
… the same thing is happening. In the jostlings the human
beings on this Earth, the temperatures are raised, tempers are lost,
and tempers are sometimes retained — temper means
balance — and some of them become more enlightened
sooner than the others. And the ones that become more enlightened
seize control of the situation. If you examine the situation, the
power of world bankers, the power of world statesmen, the power of
the establishments in all countries, a handful of people who became
enlightened before the others, seized control of the situation.

Immanent Spirit

Now
in exactly the same way, inside any individual when the power comes
in, it has trapped a chaos, it can either be a Leo — give it up
and prefer to be free — or it can dedicate itself like the
Scorpio attachment, devotion, or when it does so it examines the
waves inside itself — looks like the drawing of an oscilloscope
screen [referring to the drawing he has just made] — it
can examine this chaos inside itself, and observe that in going in it
has produced a small model of itself by in-turning and rotating, and
producing zones of encapsulation. And it goes on doing this. Because
it is power which is infinitely mobile it doesn’t go to the
dead centre, because it would then stop. It goes in and then it comes
out again. And it goes round and round … it never goes quite
into that centre. So we write I.S. in the centre for Immanent Spirit
or Inner Sentience, right in the middle. It cannot be destroyed. The
centre of your being is absolutely impregnable because the energy
that moves inwards can’t go to a dead centre. It’s got to
come out again, and in the process it is rotating and producing lots
of little Tauruses.

In The Act Of Looking You Create

And it
goes on doing this, and continuing even inside these, until it comes
down to what the physicists would call primary particles. Things like
electrons, there may be smaller things than the electrons. The
proton, the neutron, the electron, all the other trons that
have been discovered … they are all simply loops, rotations of
energy, and they’re inside you.

And when
you examine, when you look inside you, in the act of looking, you
create. If you had a perfectly blank mind with nothing in it, and you
decided to look in it to see if there was nothing in it, at the very
moment you looked you would create something. And if you then thought
that this thing which you’d just created was there before you
created it, that would be an error. You have created the own object —
the object that’s owed to you — by your interest.
Consciousness is a catalyst. You create objects in your mind.

You know
this, because if you’re afraid of something you start imagining
the thing you are afraid of. If you hope for something you start
imagining the thing you hope for and you can embroider it, you can do
an Emily Dickenson dinner plate if you wish, with real lace on it.
You can do anything whatever with your interest. It is your interest
and no one else’s that is creating your world.

Now this
is of tremendous significance because it means to say that the world
you think you see is a projection of your interest, your imagination,
your Sentient Power, your like and dislike, your volitional
intention, your ideational power. It is all your own handiwork. Like
a man sitting outside the National Gallery drawing a fish on a plate
on the pavement with the words, All my own work. You can
actually get paid for it, because passers-by feel superior to you and
they love feeling superior, so they will throw a trouser button in
your plate. Later on you can pawn it.

The world
is full of projections and people are thinking that the thing that
they project is really there … and then reacting to it. They
project love and they want love back, they project hate and they
expect revenge. And they defend themselves against the revenge they
expect. [51:16]

Now if you
once comprehend thoroughly that the world is really your projection:
if you look in this room there are a lot of people, yet all the
people in this room for each one of us are projections. Because we
don’t see that person as it is from the Infinite, as a power
self-creating itself with its own self-positing imagination, its own
power making its own form, making its own function … you don’t
see that. We vaguely feel that an ideal person could be improvement
on the one we see. What we project is not what is there. What is
there is perfection from eternity in every individual. And can you
believe that? Can you believe that every human being you’ve
ever met is actually, not later, but now, perfect, from this
mysterious input? That that is at such a high vibrational frequency
that at the very level of your ordinary sense organs you can’t
see it. But everyone is already perfect. But it’s through the
contingent stimulus, interfering with your opinion of you, that you
tend to project the impedances that you experience onto the other
person. You lower your frequency of perception by tensing yourself
against the contingent stimulus. Contingent stimulus — the
stimulus given with touch — is the big bogey. [53:01]

Transparency

Now, in
all the great religions it talks about the transparency of the wise
man, of the sage. What it means is that when a stimulus comes to you
from another person, instead of rushing out from your centre to meet
it, and defending yourself against it if it’s undesirable, or
dragging it in if it’s desirable, you deliberately let it go
through you, saying to yourself, This is not my infinitely
originating self-creative being. It is an external so I will let it
go through. I will literally let it go through.

Now the
cept in percept and concept is from a word
meaning to capture. When the stimulus comes to you from anyone
at all you tend to grab, to hold it while you examine it, and at the
very moment of holding it you have created an object which wasn’t
there until you grabbed at it. The conceptual world is a world
created by people who, through fear, through anxiety, grab at every
energy as it comes in.

Now the
wise man says don’t grab, let the stimulus come, and count
it for what it is … a phenomenon: simply a form not
originating in your infinitely originative being, but coming from
beyond your unique being, and therefore to which you will say, I
open the door, you can go through. Rather like when you’re
on the motorway and somebody overtakes you in the fog at ninety miles
an hour and you wind the window down and say, pass, friend, on
your way to death. You let them go and you don’t emulate
their behaviour. [55:01]

Think
about this, because it is the most important psychological trick you
could possibly know about. To make yourself transparent to insult,
and to praise, offered to you from outside your being. Lay not that
flattering unction to your soul1,
and don’t be injured by insults thrown at you by other people
who have their own problems anyway.

Now
in the Aquarian position the symbol is the waves on water, because
the whole universe is nothing but vibratory
behaviour of power. There isn’t anything whatever in the
whole Universe, the radiations of stars, of the Sun, the behaviours
of any kind of power field in inter-space, the energies involved in
the mineral world, the energies in the plant, the animal, the human,
the angelic, whatever level … they are all vibratory
behaviours of power. There isn’t anything that is not Sentient
Power, and it is vibrating.

But as
we’ve seen, the vibratory behaviour can be looked at in a
three-fold way.

There is Power.

There is Form.

And there is Function.

Now how
can you be afraid if you know it’s only Power and that the
Power is eternal and infinite, and there is only form posited by the
Power, and there is function of the Power through the form, or of the
form energised by the Power? Where is the problem? There is no
problem. Nevertheless, the inertia of previous thinking patterns, the
inertia of your training — the inertia of an oligarchally
imposed educational system that teaches you to be living in a
competitive society in which you have to protect yourself against the
contingent stimulation of other beings — the inertia of that in
your mind tends to inhibit you.

So this
inertia has to be viewed as a very powerful enemy. What we are
talking about is fundamentally very simple, but your mind process
from your education — and the better educated you are, the more
qualified you are in terms of science, in terms of the arts, in terms
of any intellectual attainment at all for which one needs a degree —
all these things have established inertias in the mind and these
inertias stop you seeing the Universe as simple as it really is. And
therefore you have to say, I see the truth … all is Power,
Form, Function, that consciousness itself is Sentient Power …
that when you converge consciousness you are converging Sentient
Power, and that Sentient Power changes the situation upon which you
focus consciousness. In which case every so called sin — that
is, separation from the Infinite — dissolves under the impact
of Sentient Power = Convergent Consciousness. So there is no sin that
is not to be dissolved by sharp examination, by converging of
consciousness into the zone of sin. [58:50]

Guilt and Forgiveness

Now apart
from the generalised anxiety that people suffer from — which
has its root in the Infinite chaos — there is guilt. The word
guilt means the will [GUIL] is crucified [T]. When you
are in the state of guilt, you are expecting punishment to result
from something you have done … either a commission or an
omission. Guilt means that you are anticipating trouble. Whenever you
sin — that is, separate yourself from the Infinite — you
expect punishment, quite rightly because it will come. That it will
come is the meaning of the word karma. As you desire, as you
initiate, so you will have to pay, somehow. But if the guilt —
the fear of the punishment to come — if that guilt begins to
paralyse you, begins to focus you down … your sin increases.
That is to say, your separation from the Infinite increases to the
degree of your consciousness of your sin.

So that to
be conscious of sin and to be guilty, and to hold on to the guilt and
to anticipate possible punishment, is an increase of the guilt, is an
increase of the sin, and this is the rationale of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the technique whereby you know the guilt doesn’t
mean anything other than you put yourself in a limited situation by
your identification, and therefore have invited, by your own
separativity a punishment from the powers beyond your zone of
encapsulation. When you do that you for give yourself … that
is to say, you release yourself from the identification. When you
release yourself from the identification then your guilt vanishes,
and you become transparent. The thing, the energy that you release in
that isolated way, cannot come back at you and harm you in the same
way that it could if you retained the identification … if you
throw the identification away.

Now, every
time you are able to confess an error, to confess a sin, to say to a
friend to whom you have been naughty, to say to an enemy to whom
you’ve behaved very badly, this was an error, it was a
closure, it was a sin, and I’m a reformed character, and
mean it, you release yourself from the retaliatory effect of those
external powers. [1:01:51]

Now all
religions are about sin and guilt and punishment and redemption.
They’re all about this technique of knowing that you
precipitate your world, and you, by your identification with the
things you precipitate, expose yourself to the reactions of other
beings to your creations. And the moment you realise that —
make it real to yourself in act — you stop precipitating the
world in that way, and you make yourself transparent to the insults
and flattery of other people, and you let their statements go right
through you and you focus on what you really are.

In verity,
it’s become what thou art. You are Infinite Power
self-wound-in to create order in your own being … not to be
disturbed by the contingent stimulation of other beings. Now if you
get two beings who know these same rules: Supposing we say we’ll
initiate A and B and tell them and they see the truth, then instead
of annoying each other to annoy each other, they can actually
stimulate each other to enlighten each other by agreement.

We’ll have a little example, a couple of volunteers. Who do we
know here that is a good volunteer for doing things? One who normally
dodges. Well have Zeta, Yes? And you know my friend Trevor …
he’s a very good volunteer isn’t he, Zeta? [1:03:32]

[Zeta] Yes.

Yes? Now I want you to watch what happens. You are to consider
yourselves both six, right? You are both Infinite beings, and you
have precipitated a physical organism … and you have done it.
No good blaming your mother and father, because you chose your birth,
and you took it into your encapsulation zone … the
hereditaments of your mother and father, right? And that’s true
of both of you.

Now I know you’re not going to fall out with me forever on
account of this experiment. If you will please look at each other …
do you remember each other? Do you remember Zeta, Trevor? Do you
remember her? Have you seen her before? Have you formed an opinion of
her?

[Trevor] Yes.

Right. I want you [Trevor], from infinity winding into you, to
tell her the opinion you have formed of her. And I want you, Zeta to
make yourself transparent … that is to say, you make it as if
he hasn’t said these things. Whether they are praises or blame,
just let them go through you for the sake of the experiment, yes? And
will you [Trevor] give her [Zeta] your … is it
going to be your true assessment, please?

[Trevor] Yes. [1:04:58]

Yes. You’ve got to get …

[The recording of Trevor and Zeta is very poor at this point. The
following’s a less than perfect attempt at divining what was
said. I’d be grateful for help in making it a more faithful
transcript. Thank you, Ed.]

[Trevor] You are a Lady. You have … a lot of your wisdom
you fashion from … [indistinct sound on the recording]

How do you feel about that as it’s going through you, Zeta?

[Zeta, giving a response rendered mostly indistinct by the
recording quality] A lot of nasty words to do with limitation.

Limitation?

[Zeta] Yes.

Were you surprised that he’d made any assessment at all?

[Zeta] No.

Were you surprised that he could verbalise it?

[Zeta] No.

Did you divide it into pleasant and unpleasant components?

[Zeta] No.

Well, will you do so and have a look at it. Are they all equal? Are
those responses in you identical to the different parts of the
statement?

What did you say about her first, Trevor?

[Trevor] I don’t remember.

[Eugene To Zeta] How did you like being called a lady in the
beginning?

[Zeta] I didn’t like it.

So there was an affective tone about that?

[Zeta] Mm.

Now what did it say about it? That he’s has not been trained in
an aristocratic background? Or does it mean that he knows the
etymology of the word lady?

[Zeta] I don’t know what he means by that.

You didn’t much like that bit, yes? What was the next bit you
said Trevor? [no response from Trevor]. Isn’t it
remarkable though, really?

[Trevor] It was to do with … that it might have been a
problem that she would otherwise not have.

What was the cause of her having to battle?

[Trevor] Widowhood.

Widowhood did you say?

[Trevor] Yes.

How do you like that word Zeta?

[Zeta] Widowhood?

Yes.

[Zeta] That word wasn’t mentioned.

Yes, but a synonym of it was, wasn’t it? There was an
equivalent, but you change the emotive charge when you change the
term, don’t you? What did you say the first time instead of
widowhood?

[Trevor] Lost her husband. [1:07:39]

Lost her husband. Now you see the reason I ask for this little
experiment was not merely to get Zeta to watch her reactions, but
also to let you observe that Trevor himself who made the statement
didn’t know what he’d said, and as usual in a court of
law the evidence is very peculiar. [general laughter in the room]

Everybody is hearing something different. And the fellow who’s
making the statement doesn’t know what it is anyway. [more
laughter]

Now, that being true, isn’t it a good idea to learn to be
transparent? Because what he said is certainly unknown to the
speaker, and what the hearer hears is certainly not what has been
said, and what the witnesses bear witness that they heard is not what
was said.

Now what does this prove? Thank you Trevor, Thank you Zeta. What does
this prove about us really? Do we really have charge of ourselves?

[Several NOs from the audience.]

We haven’t. The reason is because of this chaos. When that
initial Infinite Sentient Power that we call Spirit wraps itself up,
it captures — conceive means with capture —
it conceives a zone … like the Virgin Mary conceiving Jesus,
yes? Now the bigger your grab, the more power you’ve got and
the more chaos you have to handle. This is why Jesus says, Blessed
are the poor in spirit2.
[more laughter] If you’ve got only a little bit, it
won’t take a lot of ordering about, will it? But if you’re
a very energetic character you probably take a great big armful of
Universe.

I saw a little programme recently in which some Spaniard peasants
were saying what the duty of the king was, namely, provide money
and work and peace for us. Extraordinary! A bunch of fellows
talking about another fellow who looked no different from them and
just as Spanish, saying it was his duty to provide us with money
and work and comfort. How did they know it was his duty? It was
nothing but a figment projected of their desire for somebody other
than themselves, to do the work. It’s the basis of what we call
representative government. [1:10:19]

Now if we say those four symbols — which are called fixed cross
as opposed to four others that are called cardinal and refer to the
pre-creational chaos — in that fixed cross is the salvation of
the human race.

You have to bind yourself … that’s Taurus.

You have to relatively loosen yourself or you will become rigid …
and the loosening is Leo.

You are to dedicate yourself — which is Scorpio — to
this process of self-examination of the internal chaos.

And bring into it an order by looking inside and discovering
Aquarius … that is the sign of memory.

Now you know perfectly well that all the things in the Universe are
actually nothing but behaviours of power. The Power is Sentient and
the Power has made the universe and the Power has made every
individual within it, and very individual is that Power in the locus
of the individual. So that every individual is absolutely, totally,
self-responsible.

But because this Power is a continuum — that is to say, is not
made of discrete atomic particles — any zone whatever in that
continuum is in contact with the infinity of information contained
within that Sentient Power. In other words, everybody — whether
they know it or not — is actually, innerly in contact with
omniscience. There is nothing you could possibly wish to know that
you could not find out inside your own being by a process of
self-examination. You don’t really need to go out and suffer a
contingent stimulus. Once you recognise that you can actually
discover in yourself — because you are Sentient Power and the
Sentient Power is a continuum — you can discover in yourself,
infinite wisdom, omniscience and omnipotence.

Occidental
and Oriental Approach

Now the technique of doing this is simply to look … to become
aware. Now you know in Egyptian symbology you have an eye which is
called the Eye of Horus, and below the eye you have a straight and a
curve. Now the eye is your consciousness, and the straight and the
curved symbolise that for which you are to look. The straight thrust
of Power, and the circumlocution, the wheedling, the curling of
Power. It is all Power. There is Sentience, there is Power, and it
can act either straightly — directly — or indirectly,
either a straight or a curling approach. So that whatever you look at
inside yourself you look with this concept in your mind: that you are
looking for the direct statement and you are looking for the oblique,
the curling statement. And by that technique of self, inwards looking
you discover that you have actually precipitated your universe inside
you. And then you will start seeing peculiar things.

First of all, if you look at the European he has, for geographical
reasons, developed an extroverted mind. Blame it on the Caucasian
Mountains if you like, because most of it started there. The terrain
the temperature, the climate, all these things conspired to extrovert
the human race in that part of the world, and they became very
extroverted and very pushy, very individuated, very ambitious for
controlling the external world.

Simultaneously with them but further east, there were some others not
tempted by the rigours of climate in the same way, who sat down and
examined themselves internally. These gave rise to the great yoga
systems. There are two ways of learning to get to the high road and
the low road to Scotland … you finish up in Scotland any way.
Taking the high road is the conceptual road, taking the low road is
empirical experiment. You can either learn by physical outer
experiments based on contingent stimuli between things, or you can
sit down and learn. The method of sitting down learning is oriental,
and the method of empirical investigation is occidental. Both ways
are legitimate, both ways finish up in the same place ultimately …
namely, self-knowledge. [1:15:42]

We can see this demonstrated because the orientals were pursuing
power by an introvert meditation. The occidentals were pursuing power
by empirical science. The yogis in the mountains of the Himalayas,
sitting up there in perfect tranquility think they have attained
their power, and suddenly an intercontinental ballistic missile goes
overhead. The low road, the empirical road, has caught up with the
introvert meditational.

Now we live in these two worlds, the world of contingency —
because there are other beings — and the world of inner
spirituality, where you deal with you. Both worlds are equally
important. There is no superiority ultimately of one of those worlds
over the other. People who praise spirit and condemn body are in as
big error as people who said there is only empirical scientific truth
and that spirit is an erroneous idea. We have to do both. We are to
sit inside ourselves and meditate, contemplate, and we are also to
relate to external beings and let the external stimulus of the other
being be used in a different way from the way it is ordinarily used.
Its ordinary use is this: the stimulus comes to you and it is either
flattering or condemning, and you are either foolishly pleased or
made miserable. You think about the other person’s opinion of
you. That is the ordinary way in which people respond to any external
stimulus. [1:17:40]

Now the true way is this: when an external stimulus comes to you from
any other being of any level — physical, emotional,
mentational, conceptual, volitional, from whatever level it comes —
instead of you thinking about their opinion of you as expressed by
the statement, you don’t. You turn your attention inwards to
you, and see what inside you is stimulated into activity by the
statement. You forget all about that person as an external being, and
you focus on your internal reactivity, because this exposes you to
you on the inside. The other person with the contingent stimulus is
then working for you whether they like it or not.

Every time you take the stimulus — whether insult or flattery —
into you and send yourself back into the depths of your inner chaos,
which you do by a time stimulus, go back to the situation where this
reaction originates, when you go back you then see situations in
which you acquired your reactivity to this kind of a stimulus. And
you don’t bother about that person at all. And you find these
things inside yourself in your own personal reactivity. Your own
personal chaos is disturbed and brought up into consciousness where
you can bring it to order. And when you’ve done that, then you
can say I thank you to the person who gave you the stimulus.
Because that person also is of that Infinite Sentient Power and has a
function for that power in your development, just as you have with
the stimulus contingently that you give to the other person. So in
that case you reverse your ordinary process completely. This is a
metanoia … a complete change of mind about how to deal with
reality. Very, very simple. Your ordinary process is that when
somebody says something either praise or blame, you either lay the
praise to yourself and are delighted that some fool has this high
opinion of you. You don’t care whether it’s true or not,
you’re just pleased with the thing said, or you are injured by
the insult … even if it was quite irrelevant to your nature.
You are so concerned with the other person that you have no time to
examine your own, innermost reaction.

But the moment you reverse that and you turn on whatever is said to
you or done to you, you turn into you and look at what is disturbed
inside you, because if it is disturbed, it is chaotic. And by the
penetrating power of your consciousness — that is, Sentient
Power converged — you look hard at the reaction in you. You
have no time for that fellow’s opinion of you. You are too busy
using all your energy, convergently on looking at your own inner
reaction. And when you do this, because consciousness is a catalyst,
you bring yourself internally into order, and you don’t react
mechanically to the external situation. [1:21:09]

Heaping Coals of Fire

In the New Testament it says it’s like heaping coals of fire on
a person’s head when they do you a bad turn and you return them
a good turn3.
Why does it heap coals of fire? Because if somebody does you a bad
turn and you react immediately with a vicious reaction they feel
thoroughly justified. They call you a rude word and you react rudely,
and they were quite right to call you a rude word because only rude
persons respond in the way you do to a rude remark … so they
are totally justified.

But if they give you a strong insult and you turn the other cheek on
them, that is to say, you do not react as if it’s an insult but
you thank them for the interesting stimulus which has reminded you of
your great grandmother’s habit of wearing bedsocks during the
day. This allows you to assimilate a mystery that would otherwise
have escaped you, and you sincerely thank that person for the
stimulus. Now that person intent to get at you, not to please you,
and immediately it misfires — and this is a rule in magic and
in witchcraft — that when a harmful energy’s thrown at
you and you take it as thankfully for a stimulus and you say, What
a lovely stimulus this is, because he hasn’t produced in
you the enmity reaction it was calculated to do, the energy returns
and re-posits itself in the mind of the person that sent it out, and
that energy overheats, physically, the brain cells. It is literally
heaping coals of fire in the brain every time you show a decent
response to indecent attack.

Now the whole thing is obviously very simple, and we have to remember
simple does not mean easy,
because of inertia. The inertia of our training, the inertia of the
social situation, of competitive upbringing, tells you to hit back.
And therefore a large amount of the energies already conditioned in
you, trained into you, will wish to carry on with the old reactive
process. And you have to capture this energy, you have to encapsulate
very quickly, speedily, with the immediacy of consciousness, the
tendency in you to react to the attacking stimulus, and capture the
energy and immediately penetrate it with consciousness looking at
your reactivity. You then make that energy your own and you actually
become more powerful on all levels of being. Your consciousness is
more powerful, your Will is, your conceptual power, your mentation,
your affective power and your physical power is increased by this
simple process of encapsulating the enemy’s statement and
taking it to bits analytically with your consciousness inside you.